Chapter Thirty-Six
The knock on the door had them all turning. Weapons came out and up. Tank, who had been snoozing up until that point, leaped to his feet, ears pricked in full alert, muscles quivering, ready for the attack command from his master.
Ian and Seth, the closest two men to the door, flanked it and readied their weapons. Lanie stepped forward, but Jesse caught her hand. She gave him the look, the one she often gave him when he got too overprotective, the one that said, “I love you, but let me do my job, dumbass.” He swore softly, but let go of her hand and grabbed his own weapon.
Harvard pulled up the hotel’s surveillance cameras on his laptop. “Okay, it’s a woman, late twenties, early thirties, Hispanic. She’s alone and appears unarmed, but I can’t see all of her to confirm. She’s holding her hands above her head. She just waved at the camera like she knows I’m watching.”
Shit, Marcus thought. That can’t be good.
He kept his weapon up as Lanie approached the door and cautiously opened it. Ian yanked the woman inside and Seth patted her down. He found two weapons. One tucked under her shirt at the small of her back, and one in an ankle holster. As soon as Seth finished, Ian shoved her against the wall.
“Hey, hey,” Seth said and zip-tied her hands behind her back. “Ease off, man. She’s unarmed.”
Ian flipped her around and again shoved her against the wall. The woman eyed him up and down. Something flickered behind her eyes, there and gone in a moment, but her face remained impassive.
“Sheesh.” She huffed out a breath and looked out over Ian’s shoulder at the rest of them. “No wonder you guys have more enemies than friends.”
At Ian’s side, Tank let out a low rumble of warning. The woman glanced down and some of her bravado faded. She gave the dog a nervous smile. “Nice doggie.”
“Nice doggie will chew off your arm if you don’t start talking,” Ian said.
The woman scanned the faces in the room and finally settled on Lanie. Her expression softened ever so slightly and a hint of pleading entered her gaze. “Can we chat without Mr. Scowls-a-Lot and the hellbeast?”
Marcus could’ve laughed. The woman was so far off base with her girl-to-girl approach. Of all of them in the room, Lanie was probably the most kick-ass and least sympathetic to the woman’s problems. “She’s with Defion,” he told Lanie. “The woman from the video with the red scarf.”
Lanie merely lifted a brow. “Is that true?”
The woman cast one more look at Tank, then tried to straighten away from the wall. Ian shoved her back. She sent Ian a simmering glare and blew a strand of dark hair out of her face. “My name is Mercedes Raya. I believe we can help each other.”
…
Mercedes tried to keep her gaze focused on the woman in front of her, and not on the man beside her. He was leaner than the last time she’d seen him, his hair shorter, shaved close to his scalp. He had more tats now, too, peeking out under the sleeves of his black T-shirt. And the dog. That was definitely new.
Ian Reinhardt.
She thought hell would’ve frozen three times over before she saw him again, and she would’ve been A-okay with that.
So why the fuck had she come here?
After leaving her meeting downstairs with the creep, she’d returned to her hotel to check on Sebastian, only to find him gone. Just gone. No note, no nothing. He’d left her to deal with Defion on her own, and she couldn’t focus on how much that hurt.
With nothing else to do with her time but think, she’d found her mind wandering back to the creep in the jacket and how not right that encounter had been. And the more she obsessed over it, the more she disliked the whole situation. Mercedes couldn’t shake the feeling that he had something awful planned for Dr. Oliver’s research. She kept coming back to one thought: Dr. Oliver was genuinely a good person. Hell, the woman had made a career out of risking her life to help people nobody else cared about. If the Bioteric man had altruistic intentions, she’d be working for him, not running from him.
Which meant his intentions were bad. And with the type of research Dr. Oliver was involved with, there could be bad shit on the horizon.
Once that uncomfortable seed took root in her conscience, Mercedes returned to the hotel thinking she’d do…something, and had seen HORNET arrive. She’d followed them upstairs, overheard part of their conversation—Dr. Oliver and one of her men were both missing—and made a decision.
Sebastian was right. If she wanted out of Defion, she just had to leave. And she did want out. With him. She knew exactly where he’d gone. She could follow him, and they could disappear together.
But first, she needed to do this one thing so her conscience would be clear.
The HORNET woman finally moved. She walked forward, hands on hips, and eyed Mercedes up and down. She was a pretty woman with skin a few shades darker than Mercedes’s own, tall and fit with long hair that spiraled around her shoulders. She had a simple wedding band on her left hand—nothing frilly—and wore cargo pants and a T-shirt just like all the men in the room.
The men all seemed to defer to her, which Mercedes had to admit was pretty kick-ass. The few women working for Defion were never given a position of power.
“If you’re with Defion, why would you help us?” the woman asked.
Okay, no more bullshit. She met the woman’s gaze. “My mission was to find Dr. Oliver and her research for Bioteric. I accomplished it, but when I handed the research off, my gut told me it was wrong. I listen to my gut. It’s kept me alive.”
Ian snorted in disbelief. “We can’t trust her, Lanie.”
She refused to look at him, kept her gaze fastened on the woman—Lanie. “He’s right. If I were in your position, I wouldn’t trust me either.” She wondered if he realized her words were directed at him as much as Lanie. He probably did. He’d never been a stupid man. Just an asshole.
She tried to take a step forward, but Ian shoved her back again. She growled in frustration. “Okay, listen, there was something very wrong about Bioteric’s man. So wrong that I’m willing to risk my life to stop whatever he has planned, but if you don’t want my help, fuck it. That’s on you.”
Lanie said nothing for a moment, then walked over to the table where a guy sat behind a computer. She asked him something and he nodded. She picked up the laptop and brought it over, stopping a few feet in front of Mercedes.
“Is this the man you gave Dr. Oliver’s research to?”
“That’s him.”
“His name is Steffan Ostermann. He owns Bioteric.” Lanie returned the computer to the guy. “We think he’s kidnapped one of our men and Dr. Oliver.”
“I think he did, too.” She jerked at the zip ties biting into her wrists. “Untie me.”
“This is a ploy,” Ian said. “And not a very good one.”
She whirled on him. “I don’t care what you think, pendajo.” Realizing she’d let Ian get under her skin—oh, she’d forgotten how good he was at that—she returned her attention to Lanie. “When I met with Ostermann, he was off. Everything about him was fake. Cold. Calculating. Nothing good will come of him having both that research and Dr. Oliver.”
Marcus Deangelo, who had sunk down into a chair while she spoke, stood up again. His eyes were bloodshot and he’d lost the color in his cheeks. “Guys…”
Everyone looked at him.
“Claire thinks the virus is a bioweapon. Who else would kill for research on a virus cure-all but a bioterrorist?”
A bolt of shock sizzled through Mercedes. She sucked in a sharp breath, and felt Ian’s gaze swing toward her and focus in. She ignored him.
Bioterrorism?
Her stomach rolled over.
Lanie studied her face, then nodded once. “Cut her loose.” She turned to the two guys standing back from the group, who had thus far been silent observers. “Contact Tuc and have him send in the cavalry. We’re going to need…” She trailed off and shook her head. “All the help we can get.”